The apples are the most important ingredient, without doubt. Insipid apples make lousy mincemeat. A sharp, crisp, flavor-laden “pie” apple is best—we are very partial to the late maturing Baldwins—but Cortlands are also good. (Granny Smiths are plenty crisp and tart, but fall short in flavor, we think.)

If you can’t find Baldwins or Cortlands, use the best pie apple you can find. And at their peak of flavor and texture in the autumn.

In our home, late October or early November is mincemeat time—so the mincemeat will be ready for the Holiday season. Ready? Yes, mincemeat at its best needs a few weeks to season in the refrigerator, say 6-8 weeks. The spices and flavors continue to mellow and will be just right for Thanksgiving and the coming holidays.

Will it keep? You bet! After all, the Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors had no freezers or refrigerators. Look at the ingredients: spices, sugar, vinegar—a cool storm cellar was good enough, ‘specially if you made a heap of it and put it in one of those many-gallon, stoneware crocks to age.

Anyway, by spring when the weather turned warm, the mincemeat would be gone. Those hungry midwestern farmer ancestors who passed this recipe down the generations wouldn’t have left a scrap to spoil.

After aging, make up mincemeat pies and tarts to freeze un-baked; they will keep for several months. Pop them straight from the freezer into a hot oven for easy baking.

In 1880 when Bess Storm's mother, Anna Frances Lynch, packed her little, brown-paper covered trunk for the trip from Boston to Iowa, she slipped in a small applewood box. In the box she had put a few pieces of jewelry and a few of her favorite recipes, including this one for mincemeat that had been in her family for as long as anyone could remember.

Anna said that her grandmother, a devout temperance worker, took out the brandy and substituted vinegar and coffee, a combination that gives this recipe a distinct taste of its own.

This recipe has been a favorite family tradition for well over 100 years. If there exists a better mincemeat, we have yet to find it. What makes it special? Maybe the brandy. Maybe the coffee. (Recent generations have substituted dried coffee to hold down the excess liquid and shorten cooking time.)